This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Hezbollah fighters killed in Syrian battle: Report

Hezbollah guerrillas fight alongside Syrian troops in a bid to capture a rebel town, raising fears Syria’s civil war could spread through the region.

Residents of the rebel town of Qusair inspect the rubble of buildings damaged government airstrikes on the weekend. The government's ground attack on Qusair was assisted by Hezbollah guerrillas from nearby Lebanon. (Qusair Lens / The Associated Press)

Hezbollah supporters carry the coffin of Hasan Faisal Sheker, an 18-year-old Hezbollah guerrilla, during his funeral Monday near Baalbeck, Lebanon. Sheker was one of about 30 Lebanese Hezbollah fighters who helped Syrian soldiers and militiamen in their attack on Qusair in nearby Syria on the weekend. (REUTERS)

By Reuters

Mon., May 20, 2013

AMMAN/BEIRUT—Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas have fought their biggest battle yet for Syria’s beleaguered president, prompting both international alarm that the civil war may spread and an urgent call for restraint from the United States.

That would be the highest daily loss in Syria for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, highlighting how it is increasing its efforts to bolster Assad.

If confirmed, the Hezbollah losses reflect how Syria is becoming a proxy conflict between Shi’ite Iran and Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which back Assad’s mostly Sunni enemies. Dozens of dead in sectarian bombings in Iraq on Monday and killings in the Lebanese city of Tripoli compounded a sense of spreading regional confrontation.

Western powers and Russia back opposing sides in the cross-border Syrian free-for-all, which is also sucking in Israel — though Washington and its allies have fought shy of providing military aid to the fractured and partly Islamist rebel forces.

Article Continued Below

Syrian opposition sources and state media gave differing accounts of Sunday’s clashes in Qusair, long used by rebels as a supply route from Lebanon to the provincial capital Homs.

Hezbollah has not commented but in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley several funeral processions could be seen on Monday. Pictures of dead fighters were plastered on to cars and mourners waved yellow Hezbollah flags. Several ambulances were seen on the main Bekaa Valley highway and residents said hospitals had appealed for blood to treat the wounded brought back to Lebanon.

The air and tank assault on the strategic town of 30,000 people appeared to be part of a campaign by Assad’s forces to consolidate their grip on Damascus and to secure links between the capital and government strongholds in the Alawite coastal heartland via the contested central city of Homs.

The government campaign has coincided with efforts by the United States and Russia, despite their differences on Syria, to organise peace talks to end a conflict now in its third year in which more than 80,000 people have been killed.

On Monday, the White House said U.S. President Barack Obama called Lebanese President Suleiman and “stressed his concern about Hezbollah’s active and growing role in Syria, fighting on behalf of the Assad regime, which is counter to the Lebanese government’s policies.”

The Beirut government, however, has limited means to influence the politically and militarily powerful Shi’ite group.

The two leaders agreed “all parties should respect Lebanon’s policy of disassociation from the conflict in Syria and avoid actions that will involve the Lebanese people in the conflict.”

Opposition sources, including the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said a total of 100 combatants on both sides were killed in Sunday’s fighting. Such a death toll would indicate at least hundreds had taken part.

Government troops have already retaken several villages around Qusair and have attacked increasingly isolated rebel units in Homs.

“If Qusair falls, God forbid, the opposition in Homs city will be in grave danger,” said an activist who called himself Abu Jaafar al-Mugharbil.

Syrian television also showed footage of what it said was an Israeli military jeep which it said the rebels had been using and which showed the extent of their foreign backing. An Israeli military spokeswoman said the vehicle had been decommissioned a decade ago and dismissed the footage as “poor propaganda.”

Opposition activists said rebels in Qusair, about 10 kilometres from the Lebanese border, had pushed back most of the attacking forces to their original positions in the east and south of the town on Sunday, destroying at least four Syrian army tanks and five light Hezbollah vehicles.

The Western-backed leadership of the Free Syrian Army, the loose umbrella group trying to oversee hundreds of disparate rebel brigades, said the Qusair fighters had thwarted Hezbollah with military operations it dubbed “Walls of Death.”

Syrian government restrictions on access for independent media make it hard to verify such videos and accounts.

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com